I (mostly) played them! But again, they are not ttrpgs. I probably shoud have clarified that in the title, and not just assumed everyone would guess that I meant ttrpgs…

Ah yes Blades in the Dark. I heard some praise about that one. But I never knew the setting was steampunky (or whale-oil-punky).

I, of course not speaking for everyone who ever used that phrase, mean mostly that the rules facilitate with their mechanics the kind of things you typically would want to do in that kind of setting. So a good airship combat system or flexible Rules to build machines are important to have if you want to make this specific activity rewarding for the players to engage with (This is the advantage of more focused rpgs, as generics tend to have less rulings for very specific things or just many, many rulings and get a bit bloated). So basically has at the right amount of (good and fun) rules, that a game you play more or less naturally evolves into the story of said genre.

A bit of flavouring also helps, just to get the mechanics out of the abstract into the actual game played (for example calling the Savage World Bennies something fitting to the setting).

I am rambling again, so here is a quick example of what I mean (for Deadlands for Savage Worlds, not directly steampunk, but I like the idea and it is fresh on my mind): To cast a stronger Spell than usual, a player (character) can “Dealing with the devil”. It is resolved not by a simple dice roll, but by playing a short game of cards, to determine the success. This is a mechanic that to me feels very fantasy/horror-western in mechanics and flavour. (Of course those extreme mechanics should be handled carefully, too many different ones would be confusing )

I hope I am making sense. If not, feel free to ask for clarification.

So it is actually fun to play? I was never really sure what to think of it, but maybe I need to give it a chance at the table (even so the rule book is a bit …unusual structured… if I remember correctly).

As I am mostly at home in Savage Worlds rules Kerberos Club sounds very nice, I will look into it (and into wild talents as I never heard of that one before).

That is a video game, isn’t it? Maybe I am too stupid to google (wouldn’t be the first time), and there is a ttrpg of the same name I cannot find. Or you mean the video game, then it is not really what I meant ( I am looking for ttrpgs, maybe I should have clarified that in the post) but the game is on my list of games I need to play someday anyway, so thanks for reminding me.